Catania's Concept of the Operant Revisited: Empirical Analysis of Response Variation and Controlling Contingencies

Six Shaver‐Starcross hens with no prior experimental experience served as participants in two experiments which were designed to empirically test Catania's concept of the operant. The stimulus consisted of a cream coloured rectangle against a black background shown on a standard LCD computer monitor. An infrared touch screen mounted to the front of the LCD monitor recorded the location of all responses made by the participants. Experiment one consisted of autoshaping the rectangle pecking response. This was done using an automated computer program designed to eliminate latencies between responses and reinforcement, as well as positional biases which may have been introduced via manual autoshaping. The program successfully eliminated latencies and positional biases introduced by the experimenter, but took longer than anticipated to autoshape the desired response in the participants. It is suggested that procedural differences account for the unusual length of time taken to autoshape the participants in this experiment. Preliminary inquiry investigating procedural differences shows that it may be possible to model speed of acquisition more accurately than done so at present, without retrospective analysis of the acquisition data itself. In experiment two the active, reinforced zone of the rectangle was reduced. The participants had no visible cue demarcating active and inactive zones of the rectangle, yet in accordance with Catania's operant, responding across all participants came to fall within the active, reinforced zone of the rectangle. The results; shifts in response distributions in relation to the changes in contingencies, offer empirical support for Catania's operant in terms of positive reinforcement across a single parameter of responding. The implications of these findings imply that when variability in responding is important; for example in learning, exploring, creating, and problem solving, Catania's operant may be favourable over Skinner's operant as a vehicle for identifying and controlling variables associated with behavioural outcomes due to its greater topographical inclusivity. Contemporary behavioural analysis favours a behavioural systems approach where the respondent and operant class distinction merges; the environment affects the organism as much as the organism affects the environment. Catania's operant is complementary to behavioural analysis in this vein

Temporal context and choice

An extension of the generalized matching law is proposed as a model for choice in concurrent chains. The contextual choice model (CCM) assumes that effects of temporal context on choice are determined by the relative times spent in the terminal and initial links (Tt/Ti), and that terminal-link value is independent of temporal context. CCM gives an excellent description of a wide range of archival data, and because it simplifies to the generalized matching law when terminal-link duration is zero, provides a quantitative integration of concurrent chains and concurrent schedules. A series of experiments with pigeons as subjects is described to test and extend the model. Results indicate that: (a) reinforcement delay and magnitude are independent dimensions of value, as required by CCM; (b) when the definition of value is generalized to apply to delay distributions, CCM can also describe data on preference for variability in concurrent chains and the adjusting-delay procedure; (c) the function relating value to delay is the same in the two procedures; (d) terminal-link value is independent of temporal context, consistent with CCM but contrary to delay-reduction theory (DRT); (e) the relationship between DRT and CCM, as models for conditioned reinforcement, parallels that between contingency theory (Rescorla, 1968) and scalar expectancy theory (Gibbon & Balsam, 1981), as accounts of Pavlovian conditioning; (f) a ratio invariance in temporal context, i.e., effects of context on choice depend on the relative, not absolute, values of Tt and Ti, is approximately satisfied in concurrent chains; (g) preference is an increasing, negatively-accelerated function of Tt/Ti; and (h) when effects of bias, temporal context, and unequal terminal-link entries are accounted for by CCM, strict matching to relative terminal-link reinforcement immediacy may describe choice in concurrent chains. Therefore, when temporal context is characterized properly in the framework of the generalized matching law, concurrent chains may be viewed as a natural extension of concurrent schedules. Important goals for future research are the development of a molecular model that can explain temporal context effects and matching in concurrent chains, and whether temporal context effects are isomorphic in concurrent chains and in other procedures such as autoshaping

A Comparison of Response-Contingent and Response-Independent Autoshaping Trials In Rats

Autoshaping is a procedure, combining both operant conditioning and classical conditioning, used in animal training to jump-start a target behavior. Lepper and Petursdottir (2017) found that response-contingent pairings (RCP) were more effective than responseindependent pairings (RIP) in producing vocalizations in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). RIP procedures entail a time-based intertrial interval (ITI) followed by the beginning of a trial, whereas RCP procedures include a response initiation period between the ITI and the trial. The current study compared RCP and RIP procedures to determine which one was more effective for acquisition of nose poking in rats. Number of days to reach acquisition (poking on at least 90% of trials) of nose poking, percent of trials with the target nose poke, and the latency to nose poke were recorded as indexes of procedure efficacy. All rats reached acquisition in RCP by the end of the study; however, one rat never reached acquisition in RIP. All rats required fewer sessions to acquisition in RCP than RIP, indicating that RCP may be more effective in autoshaping the nose poke behavior in rats. Extensions of this finding could be in autoshaping procedures and even in producing vocalizations in children with ASD

Instructional and trial durations in conditional discrimination

Pigeons acquired a conditional discrimination in an autoshaping procedure in which a color (instructional) stimulus signalled which positional (trial) stimulus would be followed by food. The design employed temporal parameters which allowed different ratios of the instructional stimulus (I) duration to the trial stimulus (T) duration keeping the absolute duration of the instructional stimulus constant, and different absolute durations of the instructional stimulus keeping the ratio of the instructional to trial stimulus durations constant. These manipulations were studied at two cycle durations, permitting the examination of the cycle to trial ratios as well. Six groups of birds were studied at instructional stimulus durations of either 60-, 30-, or 6-sec and trial durations of either 12-, 6-, or 3- sec. Groups were exposed to either a 60- or 30-sec cycle duration. The results showed that the larger the duration of the instructional stimulus relative to the trial stimulus, the greater the rate and final level of acquisition, implicating the ratio of I/T as a controlling variable. There was one exception to this general finding, a group exposed to the simultaneous presentation of the instructional and trial stimuli. A simple model of instructional control based on temporal factors was presented

The Effect of the Long Anchor Duration on Performance in the Temporal Bisection Procedure

The present study investigated the determinants of the location of the bisection point (BP) in the temporal bisection procedure. Interest in the study of temporal perception emerged from the finding of the scalar property such as Weber’s law for time and the ratio rule in behavior under Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. One method to investigate temporal perception in both non-human animals and humans is the temporal bisection procedure. The primary dependent variable of this procedure is the BP, which has been taken as the subjective midpoint between two durations. The ratio similarity rule (Gibbon, 1981) hypothesizes that the location of the BP is determined by a ratio comparison between the short anchor duration and the long anchor duration, and the midpoint is at the geometric mean (GM) of the two anchors. The Short/no short hypothesis, on the other hand, indicates that the location of the BP is only influenced by the short duration (Machado & Keen, 2003). The present study investigated how the value of the long anchor duration influenced the BP in the temporal bisection procedure. In Exp. 1, pigeons were exposed to different values of the long anchor duration across four experimental phases. The four phases were a 3- vs. 9-s condition, 3- vs. 27-s condition, 3- vs. 13.5-s condition, and 3- vs. 27-s condition. In the bisection test, durations that were intermediate between the anchor durations were also presented. The stimulus duration that occasioned a ‘long’ choice response on 50% of the trials, p(long) = 0.5, defined the BP. The results showed that the BP fell at the GM of two anchor durations in each phase as predicted by the ratio similarity rule. This outcome fails to support the Short/no short hypothesis even though the anchor pairs of the first two phases of the experiment were the same values as in Machado and Keen (2003; Exp. 3). Exp. 2 was conducted to further assess the results of Exp. 1 by counterbalancing the sequence of conditions. Two groups of pigeons were exposed to two discrimination conditions, 3- vs. 9-s and 3- vs. 27-s, in opposite orders. The results showed that within groups the location of the BP differed between the 3- vs. 9-s condition and the 3- vs. 27-s condition as in Exp. 1. However, the degree of the change in the BP differed between groups. The difference was larger when the 3- vs. 9-s condition was followed by the 3- vs. 27-s condition (Group 3-9 to 3-27) than when the 3- vs. 27-s condition was the initial phase (Group 3-27 to 3-9). In addition, for Group 3-9 to 3-27, the BP was at the GM of the two anchor durations in the 3- vs. 27-s condition when the initial training condition was 3- vs. 9-s as predicted by the ratio similarity rule and suggesting a relatively strong influence of the long anchor duration. On the other hand, for Group 3-27 to 3-9, the BP in the 3- vs. 27-s condition was less than the GM when it was the initial training condition, which indicated that the effect of the long duration was relatively small, conforming more closely to the Short/no short hypothesis. Thus, the location of the BP in the 3- vs. 27-s condition depended on the order of conditions. Keypecking to the sample key during a trial, sample-cue responding, was also examined. The functions relating sample-cue responding to elapsed trial time were similar across phases for each group. That is, even though there was a difference in the shape of the functions between the groups, the pattern of sample-cue responding in the initial phase did not change in the second phase within each group. The degree of superposition of the functions across two phase was better with a relative-time scale than with an absolute-time scale for Group 3-9 to 3-27, showing the scalar property of sample-cue responding. For Group 3-27 to 3-9, the degree of superposition was better with the absolute-time scale than with the relative-time scale. The results of the present study suggested that the initial discrimination condition established different degrees of stimulus control of behavior by the long duration, and that the initially-acquired stimulus control transferred to the following discrimination condition. The implication of this interpretation to other research findings was discussed

Delayed disruption of temporally controlled behavior

Delivery of response-independent food during intertrial intervals (ITI) of fixed-interval (FI) schedules was used to examine the resistance to change of temporal control in pigeons. After response rates stabilized on an FI 150 s ITI 135 s, response-independent food was delivered at the beginning of the ITI in one condition and at the end of the ITI in a separate condition (Experiment 1). The ITI then was shortened to 35 s and the same conditions were examined. In Experiment 2, these same conditions were examined, but with responding maintained by an FI 30-s schedule. Differential effects of food location were not obtained in either experiment. The results are discussed in relation to such parameters as delay of disruption, disrupter frequency, ITI duration and general resistance to change of FI schedules

Columbus State University Honors College: Senior Theses, Spring 2020

This is a collection of senior theses written by honors students at Columbus State University in Spring 2020.https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/honors_theses/1001/thumbnail.jp

Acquisition in Autoshaping

Quantitative data on the speed with which animals acquire behavioral responses during classical conditioning experiments should provide strong constraints on models of learning. However, most models have simply ignored these data; the few that have attempted to address them have failed by at least an order of magnitude. We discuss key data on the speed of acquisition, and show how to account for them using a statistically sound model of learning, in which differential reliabilities of stimuli play a crucial role. 1 Introduction Conditioning experiments probe the ways that animals make predictions about rewards and punishments and how those predictions are used to their advantage. Substantial quantitative data are available as to how pigeons and rats acquire conditioned responses during autoshaping, which is one of the simplest paradigms of classical conditioning. 4 These data are revealing about the statistical, and ultimately also the neural, substrate underlying the ways t..